The Cherry Orchard

There’s an important vote — and not just for symbolic reasons — facing the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. Nominee Michael Mukasey refuses to take a firm stand against torture as an interrogation technique, and this is all the reason we need to refuse his application to serve the United States of America as Attorney General.

The question of torture as an interrogation technique is not a simple one — in fact, many smart people take a variety of stands on the issue. I will not preach about it (not today, anyway) but I will say that I consider it a basic principle of my beliefs that it is wrong, and that it is beneath the greatness of the United States of America. No, I can’t absolutely guarantee that some CIA or Army or Blackwater operative’s failure to torture a suspect won’t result in a “smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud”. But I have thought hard about this, and I believe we are correct to take this risk. We will seek safety with better methods. A much greater risk than the “missed secret”, I think, is the risk that the acceptance of torture as an interrogation technique by the United States of America will be used as a powerful enabler by those who do not respect the rule of law either within our borders or outside them. This is why our presidential administration’s equivocation about the practice of torture is so deeply offensive; it stokes in many decent Americans a fear of a fascist future in our own country.

According to news reports of the nomination proceedings, Senator Chuck Schumer will play a decisive role in the Judiciary Committee vote next week, and has not yet indicated which way he will vote. Because I live in New York, Chuck Schumer is my Senator, so I will use this public platform to appeal to my elected official. Senator Schumer, please vote no on Michael Mukasey’s nomination unless he makes it clear that he will take a strong stand against the acceptance of torture as Attorney General.

Here’s White House press spokesperson Dana Perino trying to justify the latest evidence that the United States currently tortures prisoners to obtain information, supposedly to protect America’s safety. This doesn’t make me feel safe.

I don’t usually read Harper’s Magazine (though I usually mean to) but I was attracted to the June cover, which asks the question “How to Repair Eight Years of Sabotage, Bungling and Neglect?” under a photo of a smiling George W. Bush.

Since I tend to walk down the street pondering the exact same question these days, I picked up this magazine and was pleased to find a broad and well-considered set of essays on this question, including the following topics by the following authors: The Constitution by David Cole, The Courts by Dahlia Lithwick, The Environment by Bill McKibben, The Marketplace of Ideas by Jack Hitt and The Military by Edward Luttwak. Being generally a foreign policy minded kind of guy, I was most interested in Anne Marie Slaughter’s suggestions on Diplomacy.

How are we going to handle diplomacy after the failure known as George W. Bush waves his last goodbye? It’s a question every 2008 presidential candidate should be able to answer, for one thing, and voters are going to demand something more than the candy-coated sugar language most of the candidates have been delivering on this topic. In her Harper’s article Slaughter wisely sticks to specific instructions: close Guantanamo, get serious about nuclear disarmament, join the International Criminal Court, get serious about the United Nations, and get serious about fighting global warming.

I think these are all important suggestions, though I’d add one more and put it at the very top of the list: renounce torture as an intelligence-gathering technique (that is to say, renounce torture).

I’m less impressed with Earl Shorris on The National Character. Where Slaughter’s prescriptions are based on the existence of concrete objects (Gitmo, the United Nations), Shorris puts too much faith into the meanings of terms like “virtue”, “evil”, “courage”, “fear”. He quotes Immanuel Kant, but he needs to be doused with a bucket of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who would have reminded him that all of these words are ultimately chimeral entities, and really aren’t likely to serve any useful purposes in any discussions, debates or exchanges of ideas, because they are too easily co-opted by alternative meanings or willful misinterpretations.

But Harper’s has put together a good essay series overall, and I’m glad it hammers home the point that those of us who really can’t stand the sight of George W. Bush anymore aren’t necessarily obsessive Bush-haters, and are really not motivated by emotion or anger when we talk about him incessantly. The problem is rather that we feel a desperate need to begin recovering from George W. Bush … and it doesn’t help that this walking disaster is still in office. In other words, it really isn’t about George W. Bush at all. It’s about how the hell we’re going to clean up the mess this moron made, and how we’re going to save our great country once he’s gone.

I’d just like to point to two posts on Daily Kos today:

Waterboarding. This is just a clip from a movie, but the illustration helps to understand what the word means. I could preach about this, but it’d be better if you just watch the short clip and come to your own conclusion.

Me Shooting My Mouth Off Again I read DailyKos regularly and I am fairly sympatico with most of the points of view represented there. However, I don’t feel confident that Democrats have a coherent strategy for 2006 (or 2008) and I think liberal/progressive activists should try to find every opportunity to de-politicize their message and appeal to a wider range of American voters. The big message for 2006 should be “WE NEED COMPETENT GOVERNMENT, AND THIS AIN’T IT”. Incompetence, incompetence, incompetence, incompetence. We don’t need any other charge to win elections, and liberals should stop over-prosecuting their case. I’ve posted about this a few times on Daily Kos and elsewhere. Sometimes I get nice reactions (big plus signs, which means people like what I said), and sometimes I get ignored. I’m pretty sure I’m right, either way.